Ourvision Song Contest
For the currently active renewed version, see Ourvision Song Contest Classic. :OVSC redirects here. Did you mean Onlinevision Song Contest? |Row 4 title = Editions |Row 4 info = 33 |Row 5 title = Specials |Row 5 info = 3 |Row 6 title = Countries |Row 6 info = TBC |Row 7 title = Songs |Row 7 info = TBC |Row 8 title = Status |Row 8 info = Closed }} Ourvision Song Contest (abbreviated OVSC), was a song contest on Youtube. The contest was managed by three persons from Sweden named Kristoffer, Nikolai and Paulina, using the Youtube account OurVisionSongContest. They are the founders of the Contest Forums and Song Contest Wiki. OVSC was the first contest to use Weebly as website, to have user score, to have awards and to use Wiki tables. It was also the first contest to have a national selection. It is considered to be the second contest in song contest history to have been founded after World Music Contest which was created only a couple of days earlier. The contest had been using semi-finals since the 3rd edition. Participation Requirements The only requirement for participants was that they have to vote in the same semi-final as their entry is participating in as well as in the final if they would qualify for it. Those who fail to vote when they are required receives warning score which eventually leads to them being unable to submit entries to the contest. Users who were caught using multiple accounts to vote or submit entries are permanently banned from the contest. Submitting Users have to submit their entry through private message on Youtube only. Anyone with a Youtube account which is older than 60 days is allowed to submit an entry. Each user can submit one entry for each edition but can enter as many national selections as they want. OVSC was the first contest to give additional options when submitting an entry but nowadays these options are requirements when submitting an entry. Except for country, artist and song, submissions must also contain an image of the artist, a link to the song on Youtube, as well as the 20 seconds of the Youtube video to use in the recap video. Voting The same voting system has always been used. 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 points are given to ten of the participating countries. Anyone with a Youtube account which is older than 60 days is allowed to vote. Participants can not vote for their own entry but they can vote for their own country if someone else submitted that entry. The voting system may vary in national selections to OVSC. Editions Each edition used to be 9 days long but is nowadays following 12 days long schedule. Voting in each semi-final and in the final lasts for 3 days. There is also one day for publishing the semi-final draw, one day for publishing the semi-final qualifiers, and one day for publishing the final results. Some editions have lasted a bit longer than they should have because of inactivity from the OVSC managers. Participants 107 countries have participated in OVSC so far. There has been 23 to 44 countries competing in each edition. The first edition without any debuting country was the 20th edition. Winners became the first country to win Ourvision Song Contest. was the first country outside of Europe to win. was the first country to win twice followed by , , , and . Now has won the contest in four editions and is the leading country for the amount victory so far in Ourvision Song Contest. Special editions Main article: OVSC, Song of the Decade Ourvision Song Contest was the first contest to announce having a special edition. Their only special edition so far is called OVSC, Song of the Decade. The special edition is held after every 10 regular editions. The top 3 songs from each of the last 10 regular editions compete in two semi-finals followed by a final to determine the "song of the decade". Participants can also host national song of the decades for countries, just like they can host national selections. National selections Main article: List of OVSC national selections OVSC was the first contest to have national selections. Participants can host national selections for the contest instead of submitting an entry if they want. The first national election ever held was MY Sound 1, hosted by HafizHalwi for Malaysia to the 10th edition of OVSC. The record of most national selections hosted for a single edition is 14 selections held for the 24th edition of OVSC. Users can only host one national selection for each edition and can not submit a personal entry plus make a national selection for the same edition of OVSC. National selections can only be hosted for two editions in advance. The longest running national selections for OVSC is Danish Music Contest which is hosted by HvdstrCBfr for Denmark. Partner contest Ourvision Song Contest first grouped up with World Music Contest in June 2011 as they were the two first contests in song contest history. As several new contests were started, Simple Song Contest joined in September, Tubevision Contest in October and OK Song Contest in November. Nowadays OVSC is automatically a partner contest with every other contest of the Contest Union. Jury Ourvision Song Contest has a two member jury. The jury members are not participants of the contest but are friends of the OVSC managers and are from Ukraine and United Kingdom. According to OVSC, the jury members are adults who have long time experience of the Eurovision Song Contest and generally have a more similar taste to the jury rather than to the televoters in ESC. The jury listens to all songs and ranks them from the best to the worst. The jury rankings are published after each edition has finished. Awards Ourvision Song Contest was the first contest to give away awards. In the first two editions of OVSC, lots of awards were given during each edition. Most of the awards were then removed because they felt unnecessary. Nowadays 4 different awards are being given. They are the Jury Award, Hit Award, Heart Award and NS Award. Also, an award called the Voters Award was given away for a long period of time before it was removed. Jury Award See also: List of OVSC Jury Award winners The Jury Award is given to the song which the jury thought deserved to win the contest. Before the jury rankings were introduced for the 5th edition, the jury gave the award to the song in the final top 10 which they thought deserved to win the most. Hit Award See also: List of OVSC Hit Award winners The Hit Award is given by the OVSC managers to a song which is not already well known. The award is given to a song which was liked by both the voters and the jury. The song should only have charted in the same country it is coming from although some exceptions can be made. The award is given to promote new music in the contest. Heart Award See also: List of OVSC Heart Award winners The Heart Award is given to the song which the jury thought most deserved to qualify for the final but didn't. The award is given to the highest placed non-qualifier on the jury rankings. Before semi-finals were introduced for the 3rd edition, the award was given to what according to the jury was the most underrated entry in the bottom half of the final results. NS Award See also: List of OVSC NS Award winners The NS Award, short for National Selection Award, is given to the best OVSC national selection. The award is given by the OVSC managers and was first introduced for the 16th edition. A lot of different factors are being taken into account when the recipient is going to be decided. Voters Award See also: List of OVSC Voters Award winners The Voters Award is no longer given. It was given during every edition between the 1st edition and the 24th edition. The award was given by the OVSC managers to the country which showed least signs of neighbour voting. User Score Ourvision Song Contest was the first contest to have user score. It was introduced for the 3rd edition. Users get 2 points every time they submit a song or vote in OVSC. Hosting a national selection gives 3 points instead of the 2 you get from submitting an entry the regular way. Hosting a national song of the decade gives 1 point and voting in one also gives 1 point. Previously only certain national selections gave user score but nowadays users get 1 point for every third national selection they vote in. Only the 20 users with the most points are listed on the official website but anyone who is interested in their current user score can send a private message on either Youtube or the Contest Forums and ask. Because of the many users who only enter OVSC once or twice, users with low user score are deleted from the list every now and then unless they have recently started participating actively. The user score used to be updated rather frequently but is nowadays only updated every fifth edition. Hall of Fame The OVSC Hall of Fame is a list of artists who have been talking to OVSC or have been mentioning OVSC. There are currently two members. They are Beatrix Ramosaj who joined during 3rd edition and Gulcin Ergul who joined during the 4th edition. Since the contest hasn't been advertised the way it was during the first few editions, no new artist has joined the Hall of Fame. Beatrix Ramosaj saw a comment from OVSC on a video of her song "Dreams come true" which had been submitted by escAlbania1 to the 3rd edition of OVSC. The edition had already finished when she sent a private message on Youtube to OVSC, asking what the contest was all about and if she was required to do anything. OVSC told her that the contest had ended and that she had finished in 5th place for Albania out of 24 countries. She responded that she was very happy with her placing and posted the results tables on her Facebook page. Beatrix also thanked OVSC in a Twitter post during the 9th edition for posting a thread about one of her new songs on the Contest Forums. Gulcin Ergul saw a lot of messages from her fans about OVSC. The fans had seen a comment from OVSC on the music video of her song "Ara Ara" which had been submitted by superXxxmausixxx to the 4th edition of OVSC. The final had just started when she decided to post the recap video on her Facebook page. A large number of votes from her fans were submitted but most of them could not be counted since they weren't submitted correctly. Gulcin eventually finished runner-up for Turkey. Gulcin posted the final results on Facebook. She had also earlier linked to the contests official website, making it reach a record high number of visitors in a single day. Videos Copyright OVSC received a copyright infringement notification on their results video of the 1st edition. The reason was that the winning song was being played for too long at the end of the video. They have uploaded over 150 videos since then without problems. OVSC claims fair use for using short parts of the songs in their videos. They consider their videos being more beneficial to the copyright owners than harmful as they are simply promoting the music for no profit. According to several comments on the Contest Forums, songs participating in OVSC and other song contests have been purchased on Itunes by participants after hearing them in a contest. OVSC once turned down a suggestion to make all songs from each edition available for free download as they saw it to be illegal. Two additional videos received notifications about copyright infringement in late 2012. This involved entries from the Philippines and Indonesia. Design The original video design was very standard. The first edition only had flags in the recap, with Youtube annotations for additional information. In the results video, there were, however, images of the artists as well. In the second edition and forward, images of the artists and flags of the countries were always shown. For the 7th edition, one of the participating users gave OVSC a new video design and logo. This design became popular and was used all the way until the 21st edition when another user created a new design and logo. The new design didn't receive as positive reception as the first. OVSC had said that once they have a third design, they would use their three designs on rotation. Music The sound which was played at the start of the videos was created by the OVSC managers using a music making program. There had been attempts to bring in new sound but users have stated that they prefer to the original theme song. The original theme song for Tubevision Contest was also created by the OVSC managers. Logos A new official logo was introduced for the 15th edition. Participants were able to vote for their favourite out of six options on the Contest Forums. OVSC6.jpg OVSC_Logo_1.png Revival In June 2015, the contest was revived under a new name: Ourvision Song Contest Classic. The contest used the same rules as the original contest. Songs used in the original contest could not be used again in the revived contest. Category:Inactive contests